Putting Statistics to Work in a Land of Illusions

By

Carl Bialik

Updated Jan. 18, 2013 7:50 p.m. ET

Wanted: statisticians to teach their craft in what many experts call the country with the least reliable statistics in the world.

The Pyongyang Summer Institute in Survey Science and Quantitative Methodology last year began teaching students at North Korea's first private university about such topics as probability, correlation and survey methodology. More than 250 students, mostly in their 20s, learned from 13 instructors from the...